When in Ba Sing Se
by engmaresh
Summary: ...speak as those in Ba Sing Se do. In which Kuvira and Baatar run up against barriers of different kinds. Sometimes the rise to the top starts slow.


Baatar and Kuvira were taking a break. Or rather, a break had been enforced, just for them. The meeting with the Council of Five—what was left of them, really—had ended early, far earlier than they'd anticipated. Unexpectedly and rather rudely, Baatar and Kuvira had found themselves chased off by the elders. "We appreciate your zeal," General Xu had said, somehow oblivious to the dirty looks Kuvira was shooting him as he bent open the earthen door of his temporary command center. Or maybe he just didn't care. "But you lack the experience! Don't concern yourself with these things. With your reinforcements, we have the matter well in hand."

"Children!" Kuvira growled the moment they were safely out of earshot. "He's treating us like _children_! How dare he!"

She stomped up a paving stone the size of a fist and kicked it hard against the closest wall where it shattered upon impact. Baatar winced.

"This is ridiculous. They wouldn't even have reinforcements if it wasn't for us!"

She stomped up another stone, and Baatar quickly grabbed her by the shoulders, maneuvering her out of the makeshift camp to somewhere where they were less likely to be overheard, where Kuvira could be as destructive as she wanted to be.

The barracks did after all belong to the Ba Sing Se military. Though the Zaofu contingent had been welcomed with open arms and quickly integrated into the existing ranks, tensions still existed in some areas. Especially in leadership, where, as they'd just been proven again, the generals were less than willing to hear from Kuvira. Too young, too inexperienced, the generals said. Just a girl, Baatar had heard one of the lieutenants whispering to another when Kuvira had first introduced herself.

The council had probably anticipated someone like Captain Hwang, or Councilwoman Timah, or spirits forbid, even Varrick to be in charge. But Captain Hwang was dead now, Councilwoman Timah had done her bit with her supply of vehicles and funding, and Varrick...was Varrick, doing Varrick things that seemed to please the generals since they hadn't tossed him out of the city yet.

They ended up in a dead-end street, the houses around it abandoned after the chaos, a slag heap of what had once been an automobile blocking it off from the main road. Kuvira started bending off chunks of it, shaping the blackened metal into narrow, knife-like strips which she shot into the crumbling brick walls.

"At least they let us into the meeting," said Baatar, rolling a pebble around with his foot. He wasn't feeling quite as optimistic as he was trying to sound, though speaking for himself, he was still surprised that they'd even let _him_ sit in on it. Unlike Kuvira, or Hwang, or even Varrick, he had nothing going for him in regards to leadership except the Beifong name. And with his mother's decision to sit out the conflict in Zaofu, he'd found quickly that being a Beifong wasn't going to get him anywhere, not in Ba Sing Se. Any achievements were to be earned on his engineering skill alone, and quite frankly, that suited him just fine.

"It's ridiculous," Kuvira snarled. A snap of her hand embedded a piece of metal into the wall so deep it just seemed to vanish from sight. "I've been a guard for seven years! Captain for two! If they would just let me–"

"Zaofu isn't the same–"

"I know it's not the same!" she snapped, surging up at him, eyes blazing. Baatar took a hasty step back. "I've been out there! I've seen things that–that–" Blinking rapidly, she turned away and strode over to the slag heap.

"Chee bai!" The molten pile of metal grew a sizeable dent under her boot. Baatar looked away, pretending not to notice the gleam of tears in her eyes. He wasn't sure how she'd react to comfort, and besides, he didn't really know what to say. Unlike Kuvira, he'd spent their three weeks in the city sitting out the fighting in the military camp, fixing and maintaining trucks and tanks, power lines and generators and the like. Safe, for the most part, except during the early morning drills, when the city military's drill sergeant took great delight in whipping him and some other more "lily-livered" residents from Zaofu into shape. Not that Baatar was going to complain about that. It paled to what Kuvira and her fellow former-guards saw in the more lawless parts of the city. Besides, as a nonbender growing up with the likes of Wing and Wei, he'd learned to take a punch and fight back a long time ago anyway, even if brotherly horseplay hardly held up against the soldiers he now trained with.

So he let her take out her frustrations on the hunk of metal while he sat against a wall and tossed broken bits of rock through paneless windows. He was beginning to run out of ammunition within reach when Kuvira finally tired out, and slumped down against the wall next to him.

Baatar carefully put an arm around her, making sure to keep his hand on her shoulder. "Feel better?"

"No," she muttered, palming away what moisture remained gathered in the corners of her eyes. "Maybe. A little."

Already stained by the contact with the slag heap, her hands left dark streaks down her cheeks. Baatar bit back a chuckle, and dug around in his pocket for a handkerchief. He habitually carried one around for wiping off oil and grease stains, though the one he retrieved was already heavily used.

"What's that for?" Kuvira asked, raising her eyebrows at the darkened scrap of cloth.

"You have…" he pointed at his own face, stuffing the useless handkerchief back in his pocket.

Swearing under her breath, Kuvira pulled the sleeves of her uniform over her hands and started scrubbing at her cheeks. It did help a little, though it also deepened the shadows under her eyes.

"Ugh," said Kuvira, letting her head fall back against the wall with a thunk. "I wish…"

She didn't say what she wished for, but Baatar could imagine. He wished his mother was here. Suyin would have barged in and taken charge. Prevented the generals from dismissing Kuvira's advice and deploying the metalbenders in a way that had gotten Captain Hwang killed. His mother had the power and influence that Kuvira and he sorely lacked. But she'd chosen to keep it to herself, to hide away behind the domes of Zaofu in some deluded, misplaced sense of self-restraint.

"We just need to be patient—" he began only for Kuvira to suddenly shush him.

"Wait," she hissed. "Someone's coming." Whatever it was, he couldn't hear it, but judging from the way she tensed, it was getting closer. She rose quickly and quietly to her feet, nudging him with her the toe of her boot when he didn't move as swiftly as she did. Kuvira taking the lead, they edged back around the slag heap and peered out into the street.

"Oh," she said, and all the tension leached out of her shoulders. "It's just an old woman."

"Hmm." Baatar peered out over her head. "Is she lost?" The road led all the way to the barracks, and there was nothing else around. The once semi-affluent middle-ring district had been evacuated upon military occupation after the original outpost in the upper ring had been firebombed by Red Lotus extremists. The fighting had mostly died down in the surrounding districts, but an old lady out on her own was...unusual.

"What if she's a spy?" Kuvira whispered.

Baatar squinted at the elderly interloper. She was dressed in a loose, two-piece qipao that had seen better days, and leaned on a cane clutched in her gnarled, wrinkled hand. "She's an old woman."

"Old aunties can be anarchists too," Kuvira muttered. But she stepped out smartly from behind the wall and gave a small bow. "Good evening, madam!" she greeted. Baatar moved next to her and gave an awkward bow of his own.

The old lady stopped and peered at them, looking them up and down like she was inspecting fish at a market. She gave no greeting in return. They finally apparently managed to meet some kind of standard, because she started beckoning at them with her cane.

"Leng zai ah!" she called. "Leng zai! Come here!"

"Me?" asked Baatar, pointing at himself and looking around. "Her?" He pointed at Kuvira.

"She means you," said Kuvira, nudging him in the side. "I'm _definitely_ not the leng zai."

Whatever that meant, the old woman seemed to agree because she shook her head and stabbed a bony finger in his direction. Clearly he seemed to be the more trustworthy of the two, though looking at Kuvira's dirt stained cheeks and scraped knuckles, he wasn't all that surprised. Still, he hesitated, considering what Kuvira had said.

"What if she is a spy?" he hissed, resisting the little shove Kuvira gave him.

"Well, then this is great way to find out if she is!" she hissed back.

"Why don't you—"

"Go!"

"Fine!" He gave Kuvira a rude hand gesture behind his back—something he'd learned from the soldiers—and only stumbled a little over the paving stone she raised under his feet.

This was ridiculous. This was just an old lady. She probably needed directions to some place, or wanted to complain about...something. Auntie stuff.

"Hello, madam, how can I help?" She didn't even come halfway up to his shoulder, though her glare made him feel about four feet tall. Already feeling wrongfooted, he sketched her another quick bow, shooting a glare over to Kuvira when he straightened. She'd started coughing suspiciously.

The auntie however seemed content to ignore her, and instead tugged insistently on his uniform sleeve, jabbering on about...something. He caught a few phrases here and there. Something about the lights? And her granddaughter needed help? It wasn't that she was speaking gibberish. It all sounded familiar, very familiar. Just the intonations seemed off and some of the words slurred together in ways that didn't make sense, and she was talking far too quickly for his mind to parse each phrase individually. He looked helplessly to Kuvira, who was now snickering behind her hand.

"I'm so sorry, auntie" he began, "I don't understand. If you could maybe please...speak slower?"

She looked at him, eyes narrowing, completely unimpressed by his manners and deferential tone. Then she poked him in the chest, hard. Her next few words took on a more scolding tone. This time he could make out a few more words and phrases, namely "Zaofu" and "parents should be ashamed" and "school."

"Kuvira, please," he begged.

"Oh all right," she said, finally taking pity on him. She pushed away from the wall, and after a quick greeting, launched into the same dialect the old woman had spoken. Coming out of Kuvira's mouth, it sounded different too. The intonations still sounded a little off, but her clipped pronunciation made it easier to make out things like "no electricity" and "repair lights" and "of course we can help".

"She's asking when we can get the electricity back up in her district," Kuvira translated. "She says it's hard for her granddaughter to study without lights at night."

"Um…" he looked down at the old woman was peering up at him through her cataract clouded eyes. Something about her reminded him eerily of Toph, and he felt a surge of sympathy for the unknown grandchild who was still being made to study despite the chaos the city was in. "What district do you live in, auntie?"

"Yibao," she answered without a moment's hesitation.

So clearly he was the one with the comprehension problem. Kuvira said something else, and the auntie responded with something scathing, before she whacked him in the shin with her cane.

"Ow!"

"She says you really should learn the local dialect. Just because you're from Zaofu doesn't make you better than anyone else."

"I gathered as much," he grumbled. "So who are we sending to Yibao?"

"You," said Kuvira, a sly smile spreading across her face. "What better way to start learning something than having someone scold it into you."

Baatar grimaced. "You forget who my grandmother is. I'm immune to having things scolded into me. If I wasn't, I'd be a bender."

"You haven't met Ba Sing Se grandmas."

She turned back to the old lady, and this time Baatar understood enough that he could figure out that she was asking the woman to wait for him.

Kuvira made a shoo-ing motion with her hand. "You'd better go, leng zai."

He threw up his hands. "I don't even know what that means."

"It means handsome boy," Kuvira explained, amusement still clear in her voice. It didn't quite make him trust her that she was telling the truth. Maybe it meant idiot child. "Now go, better not keep our auntie here waiting, or she may have a few more choice words to say about your upbringing."

Baatar rolled his eyes, turning back to the barracks. He'd been assigned a vehicle to be used for his maintenance work, in which he kept most of his tools and equipment. It made movement across the various sectors of the city far easier, and in this particular case, he hoped that the offer of a ride would spare him from further abuse and mockery.

It didn't take long for him to sign out the vehicle—no matter the bullying, single handedly restoring power to several sectors went far with building trust—and he drove carefully down the road, keeping an eye out for the two women.

He found Kuvira and the old woman sitting on a bench bent out of the ground, chatting like old friends. As he hopped out of the truck, the old woman said something that made Kuvira throw back her head and laugh. Something warm unfurled in his chest, and he quickly turned around, pretending to look for something under the seat. As embarrassing as it was to have his lack of fluency thrown in his face, he found himself immensely grateful at the auntie's sudden appearance. He hadn't seen Kuvira laugh like that in weeks, no, _months_ even, not since she'd had her falling out with his mother when Suyin had discovered he was going along to Ba Sing Se.

Closing his eyes, he replayed that laugh in his mind. How it had brought a flush to the stressed pallor of Kuvira's face. The gleam of her teeth in her widening smile. How it made her eyes crinkle in the corners.

Groaning under his breath, he buried his face in his arms. He was being ridiculous. Completely and utterly—

"Baatar?"

With a yelp he recoiled under the hand that landed on his shoulder, spinning around and accidentally bashing his elbow on the doorframe. Sharp pain and tingles spread down his arm as he clutched it to his chest, hissing from the discomfort.

"Sorry," said Kuvira, her hands held up before her, open, palms first. Showing that she was unarmed, like she would reassure a skittish civilian. "You were just staring into space. Everything okay?"

"Um, yeah, everything's fine," Baatar muttered. At least now he could explain the redness in his face as a result of the pain in his elbow. "I was just...looking for something," he ended lamely.

Kuvira's raised eyebrows told him that she didn't buy his excuse at all, but she didn't press him any further.

The pain abated and he shook out his arm to get rid of the rest of the tingles. The old lady had meanwhile climbed into the passenger seat. Quite impressive that she managed to do so without any help. Baatar stamped down a twinge of guilt at that, reasoning that if she'd needed any she'd definitely have made it known.

"You're not coming?" he asked Kuvira as he climbed back into the truck.

She shook her head. "I'm going to head back, try to talk to General Xu again."

Baatar made a face. "Do you really—"

"I know I don't have the experience they do. But I've been trained by one of the best metalbenders in the world. Most of us Zaofu guards have been. We can do more than what the generals think us capable of." Her green eyes flashed with determination. "We're not going to lose any more people due to their terrible strategizing. I have to try."

"Okay." He leaned down to take her hand and gave it a firm squeeze. "Good luck. Just...don't let them get to you."

Her small smile was reassuring despite her steely gaze. "Don't worry about me. You be careful too, okay?"

"I've got auntie and her stick here to protect me."

Kuvira laughed softly, showing teeth. "Alright then. I told her not to keep you too long, and that you're taken so she won't try to make you marry her granddaughter."

"I–what?" he sputtered. "You said what?"

But Kuvira shut the door and stepped back. She gave him a little "move-along" gesture and a short wave, then turned back towards the camp.

Next to him, the old lady cleared her throat.

"Sorry, auntie," Baatar mumbled, starting up the vehicle. "We'll go now."

She harrumphed contentedly. Baatar cast one last look at Kuvira through her reflection in the rear view mirror then pulled away. Somewhere in the Yibao district, broken power lines and a poor studious granddaughter were waiting for him.


End file.
